Iwan's info lifeline for students lives on

Omar Prihandono , Contributor, Jakarta

Remember third grade of junior high school, when the boring geography teacher gave you a holiday assignment of making a list of countries in the world, along with their natural resources, names of their leaders, national anthems and pictures of their flags?

Way back in 1988 when Google-ing was unthinkable, that useless -- if not silly -- assignment was more than enough to create a living nightmare for the entire class and, more importantly, ruin the schedule of our daily afternoon soccer matches against neighboring schools.

But as we all know, every generation has its own secret weapons, those advancements that can save youngsters from weird and time-consuming school assignments. Mine was in the form of the 800-page local encyclopedia called Buku Pintar (Smart Book).

"Every time I flip through the pages, I see a book that combines my two hobbies of reading and making clippings, the one that has given so much to my life," said Iwan Gayo, author and editor of Buku Pintar, responding to praise about the phenomenal success of the book in a local publication scene filled with comics and romance novels.

Unlike the Britannica encyclopedia series, unaffordable for most students of my generation, Buku Pintar was truly an Indonesian-language reference book that contained both important and trivial information, starting from the list of U.S. presidents, winners of All England badminton championship to the geographical facts of otherwise obscure Burundi, Sierra Leone and Vanuatu.

And you never know when you will need information on Malta's first president.

First published in 1986, Buku Pintar, originally written in versions for adults and youngsters, is now in its 35th edition and has sold more than 500,000 copies. It is revised by the author every five years to keep up with the latest global news, facts and information.

It may come as a surprise to some that Iwan compiled the most famous general reference book in Indonesia from scratch, copying various almanac collections from libraries in Jakarta.

While he was a contributing journalist for several local newspapers in 1978, Iwan realized that almanacs published by a number of foreign publishers, including The New York Post and Reader's Digest, were invaluable reference sources for his articles, but none were in Indonesian.

"I thought that wouldn't it be good if I could condense those almanacs into one in the Indonesian language and have a publisher publish it, so people with poor English like me out there could read it."

He borrowed dozens of reference books from libraries in Jakarta, copied the pages, read through all the facts and information, sorted them out and retyped them by himself in seven months. Iwan was convinced that his sleepless nights of doing the manuscript would pay off when he closed a deal with a publisher.

But no publisher wanted the draft of Almanac Student: Buku Pintar. His idea of putting thousands of items of general information into one book was dismissed as too unusual, and that thick books did not sell unless they were novels.

He decided to sell his car, using the money to print and distribute Almanac Student to several bookstores.

"The sales were not good, but at least there was someone who bought it and I knew there was a market for my book. I decided to revise the almanac, put more information into it and called the new one Buku Pintar Senior," said the father of 13 and husband from two wives.

Rejection was not something new for the man who was born in Takengon, Aceh, in 1952. His late father -- the head of the Indonesian Nationalist Party (PNI) for West Aceh in the 1960s -- inspired his unconditional adoration of Indonesia's first president Sukarno.

"I love him, I'm his imaginary son and I created a special section about him in Buku Pintar," he said through blinking eyes. For the sake of shaking hands with Sukarno, 16-year-old Iwan set off for Jakarta, using money he collected from selling cigarettes in his hometown.

Of course, it was not that easy. Instead of meeting Sukarno face to face, Iwan ended up living in an orphanage. After completing high school, he landed various jobs, from tour guide to subeditor at several newspapers, during the 1970s.

"I would take any kind of job because I knew the fighting spirit of Sukarno lives in me," he said.

Following the poor sales of Almanac Student: Buku Pintar, Iwan drowned himself in the creation of the even thicker edition Buku Pintar and the story of restless nights was revisited. Four years later, in 1986 Buku Pintar Senior was finished. In July that same year, Iwan rushed all of the copies straight from the printer to the Association of Indonesian Book Publishers (IKAPI) Book Fair in Silang Monas, Central Jakarta.

It was a very smart business decision indeed, as at the end of the book fair, Buku Pintar was named a best seller with more than 5,000 copies sold within a week.

"It turns out that people don't mind reading thick books other than novels, I'm kind of lucky as Buku Pintar had no competitor back then."

Nearly 20 years after the book fair success, life is still good for Iwan, thanks to continuous reprints of Buku Pintar Seri Senior as well as other publications which he wrote and edited.

"I've been to many parts of the world, staying a year in America and even spending some time in Syria, Jordan and Egypt doing research on Islam."

The latter experience has had a lasting influence on his life. He joined the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) as its legislative candidate for an electoral district in Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam (NAD). "I see a new paradigm of Islam, and the party I joined has a platform that supports it."

However, some of his thoughts and activities seem to contradict the understanding of that new paradigm. He said the destruction of the great Buddhist Bhamiyan statue in Afghanistan during the Taliban regime was justifiable, and that the Bali bombing, which took hundreds of lives, was "OK", because he heard Paddy's Club often held striptease shows for its clientele.

He has also become the chief editor of a bulletin called Hot Issue, which compiles news clippings and provocatively reports on topics of the moment on the current local political scene.

It's all part of his paradoxical personality: an intellectual fighter on one hand and a newly reborn religious-political activist on the other. He is an ordinary citizen who witnessed his three-floor office in Klender, East Jakarta, turned to rubble during the 1998 riots, and an author who is now in a court battle to gain his rights after a copycat copy-pasted 180 pages of his Buku Pintar Senior in a similar work.

As for me, I simply recognize him as the person who rescued me from being scolded by my geography teacher.